claudiawerner

You're just restating your definition of what you define capital to be and my point is that some qualified people disagree on that definition. You can call your definition 'woogum', but the fact is that there's no book called Woogum, yet there is probably a book called 'Property' and I'm certain there's a famous one called 'Capital'.

'As against state ownership is an interesting bit to use as part of the definition, because it creates the whole rest of your argument for you (by which you must say that a term like 'state capitalism' is nonsensical, but I disagree). This is fundamentally an issue of definitions, and I'm more than happy to agree to disagree on that, or even to go with your definition, and I'll use capital-prime to denote what I'm talking about.

However, according to Wikpedia (quoting Samuelson) capital is "those durable produced goods that are in turn used as productive inputs for further production" of goods and services" - so while a subclass of property, certainly not 'just property'. This also raises an empirical question, that is, in a given society what are those 'durable produced goods...' as they exist in the macroeconomic sense? Yet others view capital as a social relation. I'm saying there are multiple perspectives on the definition, but that's the nature of multiple interested parties talking about a politically, ideologically, and socially charged subject.

The idea that capital is ahistorical (or at least, traces its origin to the concept of human property itself by being 'just' property) is not a claim to be made as though it were uncontroversial. In fact, many people proposing non-capitalist systems disagree the idea that capital is 'just property' for good reasons, which may be worth considering.

You argue that the capitalist system presupposes these rights and the rule of law; I would say that historically speaking capital itself (more importantly its production process) presupposes these rights and capitalism presupposes capital.

I don't think that's true - science is a social process just as much as it is a method; it has institutions, funding, public relations, disputes on technical and non-technical points (article is case in point). As a social institution, it is well within the purview of social norms, unless we are to exempt scientists from criticism of their activities while wearing a lab coat (or to render such criticism incoherent) - an absurt proposition itself.

It's really not a great point to use London, by far and wide the only and biggest exception the rest of the market in the UK, to compare salaries for tech workers. You can earn quite a lot more adjusted for conversion and taxes pretty much anywhere in the US if you compare to someone living outside London. And even then, London rents (never mind houses) are ridiculously expensive.

I'm interested in whether the available statistics from law enforcement underestimate how frequently it happens - and how one could possibly find out.

"Learning to write kanji" is something completely separate from learning to recognize kanji. The book teaches you how to write kanji. The usefulness fo the book derives entirely from association with memory you already have. You're ignoring the fact that mnemonics which already exist in your mind can be used to write the kanji.

>How many kanji can you read?

That's not the point of the book; the point of the book is to build symbolic recognition and memory by hooking into words you already know. It's not there to teach you vocab, which is how one does learn readings and usages.

I will say that even about half way through, many kanji I see are no longer unintelligible blobs, but I can identify them with high accuracy and associate with a word. Sure, I can't read them, but I can recognize them, which is all I need to associate that with vocab with readings.

I already tried sitting down with kanji vocab and it wasn't worth it - I'd recognize kanji only from context and the general shape of the blobs, as if they were fuzzy in my mind. I was unable to actually write them, because I didn't recognize the components from which most of them are formed. Heisig removes those worries automatically.

>One of the reasons Marx is so popular is that his writing is vague enough that people can read a very wide range of meaning into the words.

I don't think this is true, and I say this as someone who's read Marx (almost) back to back. The ambiguities are sometimes mathematical, and there are debates as to meaning in some places, but the overal thesis and critiques are anything but vague, whether you agree with them or not.

I'm currently using Heisig's RTK; it's been great. I wonder if you simply don't like the system or if you think the pedagogy is ineffective/inefficient.

How does one 'prove' that other than by appealing to a list of 'human rights', upon which you and the other commenter surely disagree? There is no fundamental philosophical principle beneath human rights in which it will rigorously generate a list of rights. It's a null question, and I suspect you know that.

The stellman of 'housing is a human right' is 'everyone should have adequate shelter', and that's a far more productive starting point. The 'right' angle adds nothing.

The "trained Marxist" phrase is so strange to me - how does one become 'trained' in Marxism? Trained in guerilla warfare, perhaps. But to be trained in Marxism has the same meaning as being "trained in Platonism" or "trained in Hayekism". The other answers she gave in the interview also indicate to me that she doesn't really know what she's talking about, and is using this language either as a LARP to claim some theoretical legitimacy or basis, or as a way to attract on-the-fence old school Marxists.

At no point did any of this 'trained Marxism' show other than in a small handful of the organization's goals, generally the most neglected ones.

Again, I make no claim as to the merit; however, to dismiss these claims out of hand without looking at the evidence first, even if the article contains hyperbole, does not do the claim justice. Suppose, for the sake of argument that the author is right about the empirical statements on pornography; in that case, there may well be a 1A-friendly case for at least a temporary ban on porn. That was the only point I was making.

I have no particular horse in this race, but it's worth noting that quite a few legal scholars have designed proposals or at least theorized under what conditions pornography could be illegalized with a First Amendment friendly law[0]. I don't know how successful their proposals are from my POV as a layperson.

Some philosophers have also suggested that even if there are good reasons for protecting the availability of porn, it may not count as speech from the POV of the philosophy of rights - it is simply too unlike other forms of speech to count. I think their arguments are at least worth considering.

[0] https://gould.usc.edu/students/journals/rlsj/issues/assets/d...

It's interesting that most responses I see day to day in regards to cultural and social critiques is generally to fall back on a line similar to "at least it's not X" where the comparable features are oriented solely around the amount of wealth, and quite often, not even a concern for how that wealth is distributed.

>Whatever draconian measures it took to get there, they were worth it.

I feel as though most lovers of liberty would disagree with this statement, whether it comes from the right wing or the left wing; it could justify literally any horror to humanity, and at worst justifies waiting out decades of repression and poor quality of life for anticipated gains for two generations of people down the line. I'm reminded that a similar argument is used to justify the maintenance of sweatshops.

In general I support that attitude, as someone who faced worse treatment for who I at home than at school, I wish I had a teacher or two to stick up for me.

It's interesting how "critical theory" is used as a prejorative not only going on a hunch, but also that the very use of it degrades the quality of any article without question. Personally I've come to enjoy quite a lot of work which many would categorize under 'critical theory' and a lot of work which many would mistakenly categorize under 'critical theory' simply due to the topics covered.

>I figured it was some probably-from-critical-theory-because-aren't-they-always liberal-artsism, but looks like it's just an unusual-bordering-on-archaic sense.

I don't think that's correct (and the age of the dictionary quoted probably isn't helping); if you search Google Scholar for "knowledges", even since the year 2000 you get about 85,000 results. It's a term of art in sociology and anthropology fields, and marginally within philosophy too. It points to multiple understandings of the world which are disparate enough to be their own 'system' of knowledge; multiple such systems are known as knowledges.

Firstly, why specify 'erect penis' as though that's where the line is crossed? Does the question only apply to parents of girls, since they're less likely to have seen a penis before?

But yeah, I wouldn't mind all that much; it would raise a red flag for sure, given that many grooming operations work by starting out as raising children's curiosity, but I do not see any inherent issue with my child seeing a penis (erect or not!).

I agree, but that's kind of what we do to resolve moral cognitive dissonance all the time, with varying results. Personally it's something I really struggle with, and the questions usually boil down to whether I would be fine living my life wrongly, or if I'll give up enjoyment of my already sad life just to feel good about myself for being moral.

I just can't picture it. 9 hours a day in the office, then I come back home and I just want to hedonistically enjoy all that I can until I sleep. Of course I'm going to want to eat a big steak, watch porn, and listen to pirated music, morality be damned, and I know it makes me a bad person.

I doubt it. I stopped using Tumblr around the time they removed adult content; not because I was there for porn, but because it just seemed so restrictive and I knew there would be chilling effects. You have to look over your shoulder with everything you post, and that's just not a nice place to be in when you want to get creative juices flowing or just reblog things for hours.

Bring back 'adult content' and I'll gladly check out Tumblr again.

Very much disagree on this point - I've both started threads there and contributed to threads there in response, and twice admins have locked my thread beacuse they claim I had no intention to change my mind in the first place - as far as I can tell, if you debate people trying to change your view, then you're soapboxing, rather than trying to clarify the argument.

I haven't posted on r/changemyview since. It's not fit for purpose, and in fact many threads consist of the OP saying "Wow, you're right! Mind changed." to a rather poor argument rather than interrogating it.

I had a feeling you'd bring up moral realism, and you're somewhat correct; it's not a necessary feature of moral realism, however, and most philosophers arguing for moral realism have stronger arguments than "that's just the way it is", which usually appeal to our intuitions about other non-moral facts, such as "this chair exists" or "I have two hands". It's up to you whether those arguments are successful, but it doesn't do anyone favours to dismiss them out of hand as you are doing. If they were so patently ridiculous, I doubt many philosophers would believe them. If they make sense by relying on our intuitions about other facts of the universe, I can see why many philosophers believe them.

If you have a solid argument aganist moral realism, I'd like to hear it, even though I'm familiar with most of the arguments for moral anti-realism, and I generally sit on the anti-realist side of the fence these days. But it does yourself a disservice to say that all such arguments are circular and logically invalid. I quite like this argument from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on moral realism:

"In light of this concern, it is worth noting that the challenge posed here for our moral claims actually plagues a huge range of other claims we take ourselves to be justified in making. For instance, just as no collection of nonmoral premises will alone entail a moral conclusion, no collection of nonpsychological premises will alone entail a psychological conclusion, and no collection of nonbiological premises will alone entail a biological conclusion. In each case the premises will entail the conclusions only if, at least surreptitiously, psychological or biological premises, respectively, are introduced. Yet no one supposes that this means we can never justify claims concerning psychology or biology. That there are these analogues of course does not establish that we are, in fact, justified in making the moral claims we do. But they do show that granting the inferential gap between nonmoral claims and moral claims does not establish that we can have no evidence for the moral claims."

Okay, say a philosopher makes an argument for why we should switch to socialism, or become vegans. These arguments would go something like:

"Socialism is good because it's a more equitable distribution of resources, which leads to greater happiness and a society with less poverty because xyz."

"Veganism is good because it reduces the harm done to animals and the harm done to humans working in the meat industry, who have far increased rates of PTSD compared to the general population."

These arguments will only convince you if (i) you think an equitable distribution of resources is better (ii) less poverty is better (iii) xyz is a convincing reason to think there would be less poverty (iv) harm to animals should be reduced (v) harm to humans should be reduced (vi) incidence of PTSD should be reduced.

These philosophers do not say there is some law of the universe which mandates that less poverty is better, or that PTSD is bad. The reasons why you should think those things, they would say, are second-order reasons. There may be some other paper arguing why PTSD in society is a net negative. That paper would ultimately read something like "icreased PTSD rates lead to increased rate of suicide/lower economic efficiency/harm to other humans". There is no single argument why harming other humans is wrong, only axioms that we would take as our priors, just as we take it that "A != !A". They just seem right, and you don't have to subscribe to them yourself.

Unlike religion, all philosophers can say is "it would be advantageous to generally valued goals X,Y,Z that we take these axioms for granted". It turns out that enough people share these axioms for this philosophical work to be useful for navigating difficult questions even given those axioms. Again, you don't have to share the axioms, but if you do, a logical argument can be produced from them, one which it would be to your embarrassment to ignore without any refutation, still assuming that you hold the axioms yourself. Again, you need not do so.

Similarly, the advice from a physicist about the heat tolerance of the hull of your rocket ship would need to balance both economic and other interests. If you don't care about going into debt, you can sey hell to the economic arguments, and use the best materials possible. If you don't even care about your ship launching, you can say hell to the physical arguments about tensile strength.

What I'm trying to convince you of is that philosophy is about as useful as any other field of inquiry in the sense that it attempts to argue from axioms most people hold already (therefore it is not a niche field) and it produces conclusions that such people can use in making choices day to day (therefore it is not a useless field). I think that no matter what particular axioms you hold, there is some philosophy which argues from those axioms out there somewhere. You yourself make philosophy. I'm not producing an argument from authority here.

Can you cite a philosopher arguing that the universe itself mandates that veganism is correct?

>and then they want to say that the universe proves them right, even though it has zero connection to the real world.

That's a failure of the argument, not a failure of philosophy. Everything from ethics to epistemology has philosophers arguing against unjustified assumptions. One could say the whole of philosophy is picking out unjustified assumptions. It's perfectly fine to start with a conclusion, so long as you can also argue your way there. If you don't think the argument is valid, then say so. What do you think philosophers do all day, just agree with eachother on every statement?

>is that mathematicians don't use their self referential axioms (in a situation which does not connect to the real world)

Yes, they do. Plenty of abstract mathematical concepts have zero connection to anything in nature or in the physical world. Some philosophers of mathematics even argue that mathematics has no root in the physical world. Besides that, the position you're arguing for is known in philosophy as 'pragmatism' - so don't pretend it's not philosophy. You're assuming your own axioms here.

>then claim that they are the experts on literally everything, because well "truth" and "ethics", by definition are everything.

That's not true; moral philosophers confine themselves to the world of moral philosophy. Epistemologists confine themselves to the world of epistemology. They don't claim knowledge about, say, physics or biology.

>a mathmatician isn't going to say that they are, by definition, the experts on truth and morals, and therefore I should do what they say anyway.

The definition of morality is literally 'what you should do'. If you disagree with that, then talk to a philosopher or just post an argument somewhere. If you don't think morality exists, then congratulations, there are philosophers who argue that too!

I'm not impressed that your argument rests upon the simple fact of calling their arguments circular (i) without specifying why and which arguments are circular in particular (ii) and saying that there are no goals to be acheived by even talking about, say, epistemology.

Nobody said you "have to listen" to anyone. You don't have to listen to scientists, mathematicians, logicians, historians, or anyone, really. But if faced with an argument you can't counter it ought to be to your embarrassment that you refuse the conclusion without considering the argument itself. All of your arguments, all of them quite philosophical in themselves(!) could equally apply to any other discipline with 'circular' axioms, such as physics (the principle of universal uniformity; the reliance on fallible observation and testimony) or logic (the axiom of non-contradiction).

>They start with a conclusion that they want, such as dual-ism, or philosophy souls, or all sorts of things, and then they wrap themselves in obfuscating circles

This is false; if you believe in a proposition, it entirely makes sense for you to argue for it. Whether those arguments are of quality is another matter, but the simple fact of arguing for a position you already hold does not make bad work.

>When the philosophers start making testable predictions

Philosophy isn't in the business of making testable predictions, just as logic or history isn't in the business of making testable predictions. Why must an argument make a testable prediction for you to take it seriously? Does this argument we're having now result in a testable prediction? If it doesn't, why did you reply? Or if it does, doesn't that show there's more to rational argumentation than testable predictions?

You assume that philosophy is like religion. Not so. I'm moderately well read on metaethics and none of your statements ring true to me, except in the case of poorly argued or shoddy philosophy, which I'm more than happy to admit does exist.

This is an uncharitable view of philosophy without much evidence to show for it, especially when it comes to the philosophy of consciousness and philosophy of computing. Not to mention, falsifiability being taken as the criterion for knowledge was itself (mathematics and logical axioms are not 'falsifiable') a claim produced by a philosopher, and one which some commentators name as circular in itself. You're using a particular philosophy to discount philosophy of science on the whole, which is ironic.

I don't know how well they work (if at all) but there's quite a market for 'hangover cure' drinks in Japan[0], and I've heard of a tradition of drinking citrusy supplements or anything high in Vitamin C in Japan. It always sounded off to me, but I suppose it would help with mineral depletion.

[0] https://jobsinjapan.com/working-in-japan/japans-famous-anti-...

Can you say which books you're talking about, and by which authors? I've also read my fair share of CRT, but mostly papers from the last 10 years rather than books, so I'm curious who you're referencing.

That's a very big 'if', yet no matter how small or big that potential/risk is, I'm still expected to pay the same amount for his potatoes just in case something goes wrong? And even then, many landlords will try and blame you and take it out of your deposite!

>Eh, war is simply fun. It’s appealing to males in particular, and our testosterone tends to lock in the intoxication. There’s a reason that Battlefield is one of the most successful gaming franchises of all time

This seems like it's essentializing psychology into core biological elements (with a shaky, uncited relationship to evolutionary psychology) without question. When statements are made this way, don't you think it closes off possible avenues for research beyond the bare facts of war and competition in future societies, at least without genetic modification? I think questions like these should be left open rather than dismissed as "war is fun, testosterone".